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The best herb gardens are close to your kitchen door, where you can pop out, cut what you need, and get back to dinner before anything burns. If you love cooking with fresh herbs, it is an essential part of every garden plan. Planting an herb garden is simple, but before you start, it's good to do a little thinking and planning.
A lot of first herb gardens get planted like a spice rack. Every herb sounds useful during planting season, but by midsummer, when the cilantro has gone to seed, and the herbs you actually cook with are buried behind the lavender and chamomile you have not touched, it can feel overwhelming. Or simply not as useful as first imagined.
The best way to build up an herb garden is to consider the herbs you already use. If parsley goes into your eggs, soups, and salads every week, grow parsley. If you buy cilantro for tacos and sauces, grow cilantro. If you use basil in pasta, sandwiches, and tomato sauce, give it more room than a plant you might only use once in a while. Planting a huge amount of herbs is fun, but if they aren't going to be used, then they are taking up space from others that you do use consistently. The key is to be realistic and make space in the herb garden for the ones you use regularly.
- Basil: One or two basil plants are enough for most everyday cooking. If you make pesto or freeze leaves for winter, plant three to five basil plants. Pesto takes more basil than people expect.
- Sage plants get bigger each year, and one plant is plenty for most kitchens.
- Parsley and chives both keep growing after you cut them, so keep that in mind when figuring out how many plants you need.
Build Two Herb Gardens
The best place to put an herb garden is as close to the kitchen door as the sun allows. A sunny strip by the door is better than a perfect bed at the far end of the yard. Most people will go outside for chives in slippers, but will not cross wet grass for them once dinner is already underway. Think about this as you’re deciding where to put the garden and which herbs to plant.
A mixed herb bed is great, but not all herbs need the same care, and that can cause problems. You cannot water basil and thyme the same way.
Basil, parsley, chives, cilantro, and dill all make soft, leafy growth. They need rich soil and regular watering. If the soil gets too dry, the basil will slow down, and cilantro and dill will start flowering.
Thyme, Greek oregano, sage, rosemary, and lavender want nearly the opposite. They come from dry Mediterranean hillsides and need the sunniest, fastest-draining soil you have. If you are watering them frequently because there's basil next to them, their roots can rot. Sage and lavender are especially likely to fail that way.
The best-producing, healthiest herb gardens separate out the plants based on their soil and watering needs. The leafy herbs should all go together where you can water them regularly. And the dry soil-loving herbs go at the other end of the bed, or in a separate pot, where the soil can dry between waterings.
Another key to organizing the herb garden is to keep the herbs that return every year on one side of the bed. Sage, oregano, thyme, and chives are perennials that will still be there when you need to replant the annuals like basil and cilantro. That simple layout also keeps you from soaking dry-side herbs every time you water the leafy plants.
In places with cold winters, rosemary needs to be in a pot that can be brought inside. It often doesn't survive a hard winter outdoors, and it doesn't enjoy being dug up and moved indoors in fall. Start it in a pot and leave it there.
Mint should always be planted in a pot. Its roots spread extensively underground, and then it'll turn up where you did not plant it. If you put it in a 12-inch pot near the kitchen, that's enough for use in tea or a salad without letting it take over the bed.
Herb Harvesting Best Practices
Many people pick herbs one leaf at a time because they don't want to hurt the plant or inhibit future growth. That instinct makes sense, and most kitchen herbs grow better when you cut them.
Basil is the clearest example. Once it reaches six to eight inches tall, cut the main stem just above a pair of leaves. There will be two small buds at that spot. When you remove the stem above them, those buds grow into two branches. This, in turn, lets the plant grow wider and gives you more stems to cut later.
Take no more than about one-third of a basil plant at once, and keep pinching off the flower buds as they appear. Once basil starts making seed, it puts less energy into leaves, and the leaves it does make are smaller.
When harvesting parsley, take the whole outer stems near the base, and leave the young stems in the middle alone. New growth will come from that center, and as you work your way around the outside, the plant keeps filling back in.
Chives and garlic chives return every year and are great additions to the herb garden because they are low-maintenance. To harvest, cut them about two inches above the soil, and only take about a handful at a time. You can cut the entire clump to the ground, and it will grow back, but it will take several weeks for that to happen.
Chive flowers are edible and have a mild onion flavor. Cut the flower stalks before they fade if you do not want chive seedlings growing all over the herb bed.
Oregano tastes best before it flowers, so keep cutting it through the season. If you leave it alone, the plant gets woody at the bottom, and the leaves turn tough. Thyme and sage do the same thing as they age. Do your last big harvest by late summer. If you do a dense harvest later in the season, the plant will sprout tender new growth just as frost is getting close, and that growth will not have time to toughen up.
A Guide For A Small Herb Garden
Start with a bed small enough so that you can reach across it and a couple of pots by the door.
Plant Genovese Sweet Basil on one side. It is the classic pesto basil, and one or two plants are enough for everyday cooking. Add Italian Giant Parsley for its large, flat leaves, then put a clump of Common Chives near the edge where it can return each year without being disturbed.
Sow cilantro in short rows where it gets a little afternoon shade. Add Mammoth Long Island Dill if you make pickles or dill sauces. Plant Broadleaf Sage, Common Thyme, and Greek Oregano in the driest, sunniest corner, and let that patch dry between waterings.